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To leave the boat in Trinidad had been
decided for various reasons, the main one was that if I could not return
it in April May 2010, Trinidad was a very low risk hurricane location and
the insurers were covering Armenistis.
On the 21 December 2009 we learned that there
was a pirate attack on a sailing boat 40nmiles north of Trinidad. A large
pirogue with 3 x 175HP outboards with 8 people on board came alongside,
shot once and they embarked the yacht armed. They tighed and blindfolded
the crew and stole everything. Fortunately nobody was hurt.
This made us a bit concerned about
this 12 hour passage.
We had to talk openly to the kids and think
how we could save some of our belongings. So we prepared two wallets with
credit cards and some cash and hide them in an easy place to find.
The items that were very important for us in case this would happen
we had to hide it in a waterproof bag...hoping that they will
survive.
We sailed 3rd Jan 2010, the wind was 15kts
from the southeast (not the best for us) considering that we had to follow
a course not directly to Trinidad but about 20degrees less than the
direct course for compensating with the equatorial current which in
this area can reach 4knots.
We left at 16:00 thinking that we
wanted to sail night in the area that the incident had happened, such
assaults happen during daytime because the pirates can motor easier,
faster during the day and usually they do not carry a radar.
We turned on our radar for the whole duration
of the voyage in order to see which boats can be seen on our radar and
which can be identified by the A.I.S.. Comparing the two we would consider
suspicious any target which would not be identified by the
A.I.S.
At nightime we did not switch on our
navigation llights and we did switch them on only when we met two cargo
ships on our way that we could identify them (a Panmanian cargo and a
French tanker).
The voyage was very quiet, no much
talking, I guess we all had our thoughts but did not want to
talk about. I am sure we all had certain fear and getting closer
to our landfall this fear had increased but being so close to
our destination made us feel better.
We came close to the coast around 03:00 and I
was watching for anything moving around us. Thankfully everything
went fine, we entered Chaguaramas bay in a dead calm entered the area
where other yachts were anchored and dropped it.
We got some sleep and when we get
up we will go to Customs and Immigration to clear and procceed to the
Crews Inn Marina.
Thats all from us folks, we will be writing
soon and add some
pictures. | 
